This was
originally published on A Good Blog is Hard to Find. on Monday, June 15,
2009.
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Kathryn Tucker Windham, Scarey Ann, and Theresa Shadrix at
the 2009 Alabama Book Festival.
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With the
latest issue of Longleaf Style magazine focusing on roots, even a
Bubba could figure out why I’ve been thinking so much about home and the South.
In the summer (2009) issue, we have Rick Bragg’s “Why I write about home”,
Diane McWhorter wrote about Birmingham and the civil rights and Nathalee Dupree
gives a tasty ode to Southern cooking. To think about anything other than the
South would a downright shame after reading it.
Truth be
known, I used to feel somewhat like a carpetbagger. Yes, I was born in the
South and I’ve lived in the South for over two decades. But, my childhood
memories of the South are slim, thanks to my mother’s second marriage to an
Army man.
With two
separate tours in Germany, I was a bonified cultured girl. I toured castles and
camped under the stars in Munich. I shopped stores downtown markets. I bought
fresh pretzels from street vendors. I never went to church and didn’t know one
single thing about VBS, GA’s, or Sunday School. I learned to play soccer with
kids who couldn’t speak English. I listened to Oingo Boingo, Led Zeppelin, and
Generation X. I got my ears pierced in Frankfurt. I read C.S. Lewis and Trixie
Beldon.
I was in the
9th grade when my family returned to the South and made our home in Alabama. I
couldn’t have been more out of touch with Southern reality as I was then. In
the mid-80s, I was a European-inspired fashionista who talked funny. My “oil”
rhymed with boil and I had not grasped the concept that anything that came
before “bless your heart” was probably an insult in sweet disguise. I didn’t
eat biscuits or grits or lard in my green beans. I had never seen the Andy
Griffith Show. I was really quite pitiful.
But, I’ve
come a long way. I married a born-and-bred Southern boy almost 18 years ago.
I
live in the country and drive by pastures with grazing cows every day o my way
to work.
I can make biscuits from scratch, prefer creamed potatoes to rice,
can’t stand to eat those five minute boxed grits and green beans are not cooked
unless seasoned with a touch of lard.
I reference tweezers to Barney and
hunting tigers.
I love my relationship with Jesus Christ more than I love fried
okra and home-grown tomatoes.
I also prefer to listen to Rick & Bubba
than Larry the Cable Guy because they are real good ol’ boys. Speaking of
which, I’m not scared of rednecks, overalls, trucks or camo shorts. I can’t
wear white to before Easter, even if they do in New York. I don’t flinch if I
see a Memaw put a pinch of chewing tobacco in her mouth after supper. And, for
Heaven’s sake, I capitalize “South”.
And, I love
Southern authors!
As an editor,
no writer has influenced me more than Kathryn Tucker Windham because she was
one of the first “girl reporters” in Alabama. And, she has a mess of talent
even at 91 and she really, really loves the South.
At the 2009 Alabama Book
Festival, she told the crowd that something was wrong with people who put sugar
in cornbread. She was serious too. She cried when I gave her a "Scarey
Ann" doll that I found online. If you don't know why "Scarey
Ann" means so much to her, well, read her latest book "Spit, Scarey Ann & Sweat Bees."
I really love
to recommend Southern authors to my friends cause there is nothing like
telling someone, “”One Mississippi” by Mark Childress will leave you feeling a
little beside yourself, but just remember that not everyone down here is crazy.
He just wrote it that way for fun.”
Most
recently, I recommended Cassandra King’s “Sunday Wife” to a northern writer
friend, who is also a pastor’s wife.
I also told one friend, who suffered minor
headaches, to read “Ray in Reverse” by Daniel Wallace and she said she had to
think so much that it cured her. (I’ve also learned to embrace my sense of
humor, which, I think, comes from walking barefoot in red clay in Alabama.)
The
only books by northerners I recommend are “Life with Father” by Clarence Day,
Jr., who died in 1935, and anything by Erma Bombeck.
My list of
authors who influence, entertain and, sometimes, warp me is very long. I bet it
will continue to grow. I like reading Southern authors because they make me
feel at home.
I may have lived for a few years in another country but I
wouldn’t live anywhere else than in Alabama. I think it’s because the South has
a way of wrapping her arms around you and squeezing the city right out of you.
Bless all our hearts.
